A scream louder and more terrible than any before broke his concentration. His eyes snapped open. The tentacles found a victim! As Lyrralt watched, the arms plucked a rider and horse from the ledge and dragged them over and down, out of sight.
The sounds that followed were indescribable. Lyrralt’s stomach lurched and would not be denied. Clinging to the cliff, he bent at the knees and vomited over the side.
“We must move. Quickly.” Igraine had turned around on his horse, his hand extended.
He seemed to be very far away. The distance from Lyrralt to the back of the horse seemed insurmountable. Lyrralt shook his head. “I can’t.”
“Can you walk?”
Lyrralt nodded. He stepped, clutched the wall tighter, and inched forward. His feet were numb. One step. Another. Somehow his legs supported him. His arm, though aching, held on to the cliff.
After a moment, Igraine gently urged his horse onward.
Lyrralt dared to look back at the Ogre on the path behind him. They nodded at each other as Lyrralt forced himself to take another step, then another, another.
The rain had started again, drops so huge that he could feel them roll down his neck. They soaked the ledge. Still he forced his legs to carry him on, concentrating on just one step at a time.
It seemed that days passed before the ledge began to widen and he stepped off the shelf. He rushed forward, past Jyrbian, past Igraine, past Khallayne’s outstretched hand, past the riders who had stopped ahead of him. He didn’t stop until there was solid ground for twenty feet all around him, trees blocking the view down the mountainside. There he fell to his knees and retched helplessly.
When he finally looked up, it was Igraine who had dismounted and was coming to help him, Igraine’s hands that held his shoulders, supported his head. Then there were others, supporting his body, someone gently wiping his face with a soft cloth, another Ogre handing him wine to rinse his mouth.
Shamed to his core, he pushed everyone away, stood on his own, and found himself surrounded by concerned faces, Igraine, Everlyn, Khallayne, Tenaj, Everlyn’s Aunt Naej.
“I thought we were going to lose you,” Igraine said with a smile, evidence of how pleased he was that they had not.
“I was just ahead,” Khallayne said. “I saw your horse go over, and I could tell there was a problem, but I didn’t know what happened.”
“He saved Lord Igraine!” the Ogre who had been behind Lyrralt on the trail said.
“What!” The word was spoken by a chorus of voices, Lyrralt’s among them.
The runes on his arm roused, clamped down, burned. “I didn’t-!” Lyrralt protested. He looked at Igraine’s face, saw only a serene smile there, instead of irritation for the mistaken idea. “Igraine saved me!”
The mumbling died down. The crowd turned to Igraine, waiting for his response.
“I’d say we saved each other.” Igraine clasped Lyrralt on the shoulder.
There were words of approval from the crowd. Some reached out to touch Lyrralt, to pat him, to murmur wordless awe and approbation. He had saved and been saved by Igraine. It was almost as if they felt that by touching him, they touched Igraine and took for themselves a blessing, a charm of protection.
Lyrralt, ignoring the seething runes, was amazed by their warmth.
As the Ogres began to drift back to their horses, ready to move on, Lyrralt looked up.
Jyrbian sat on his horse, looking away toward the horizon, his face dispassionate, expressionless. Lyrralt realized that, of all the hands that had reached out to help him, his own brother’s had not been among them.
Jyrbian looked down at him finally and said, “Are you going to stand there all day?” He spurred his horse. The huge animal gave a lurch in Lyrralt’s direction, then wheeled and headed up the trail.
“Lyrralt will be one of the ones to go. It’s his horse we need to replace.” Jyrbian’s voice, speaking with the authority of one who knew he would not be disputed, echoed in Lyrralt’s thoughts as he and his entourage of fourteen rode into the human settlement.
Since the deaths on the trail, Jyrbian wasn’t likely to be disputed. His loudest detractor, Butyr, had been the first one dragged from the ledge to gruesome death. Lyrralt, who was exalted for having been saved by the grace of the gods and the intercession of Igraine, hadn’t even tried to argue, though he had not wanted to make the trip into Nerat for supplies and information.
The three weeks of travel since the deaths of those on the cliff trail had been long and tedious. Lyrralt had watched, planned, waited for another chance to do his god’s bidding, but the opportunity eluded him. Now Igraine was always encircled by a group extolling his brave actions.
Lyrralt himself was sought out, admired. Perhaps, he reflected ruefully, that was why Jyrbian had insisted he lead the group into Nerat. Perhaps Jyrbian didn’t want anyone else becoming popular and powerful.
Obviously relishing his leadership of the refugees, Jyrbian was trying to pattern his mannerisms after Igraine.
Lyrralt had watched his brother, day after day, pulling a mask over his natural cynicism, forcing out calm, gentle words where harsh ones would have been more comfortable on his lips, striving to show a face that would prove worthy of Igraine’s approbation… and Everlyn’s love.
Unfortunately, the latter eluded him. Igraine might smile at Jyrbian and nod approvingly, but his daughter seemed oblivious to Jyrbian, impervious to all his smiles and courtly bows.
As the party rode into Nerat, down the middle of the main street, all human eyes, hostile and cold, turned on them. This burg was nothing like Thorad. It was a poor, dusty collection of unmatched buildings, a few made of stone, some rotting wood, and some apparently made of nothing more than mud and sticks.
Lyrralt and his people were accustomed to humans as slaves, dispirited and harmless, their wills broken, all resistance crushed. These humans didn’t appear to be any of those things.
Lyrralt chose a ramshackle building that appeared to be a merchant center and motioned for half his party to accompany him and the other half to remain with the animals.
The inside of the wooden building smelled abominably of human sweat and unclean flesh, of unfinished, weathered wood and mysterious human spices. It was dark, lit by only the light from two dirty windows and lanterns in each corner. The single room was piled with bags and boxes of merchandise, shelves stacked with unmarked earthen containers.
“We don’t want your kind in here,” a harsh, guttural human voice said from behind the counter, which ran the width of the back of the room. Behind it were more shelves, these containing bottles of ale and wine.
Lyrralt, whose eyes were still adjusting after the noon sun’s brightness, could barely make out the lean figure of a male human, fists propped on the bar. The human had long, dark hair curling about his shoulders and shorter hair across his entire face.
Because of the hostility, the outright hate in the human’s voice, Kaede, hand on the hilt of her sword, started forward. Lyrralt stopped her unobtrusively.
Igraine and Everlyn had both spoken with him on the trail, warning him of reacting too severely to the hostility they were sure to encounter in Nerat. They had been extremely forceful in their opinion that the humans should be dealt with fairly and respectfully.
Lyrralt said coldly, “We have coin. We require supplies and information. We can pay handsomely. And we offer information in return.” Igraine had told him to say that, too.